


9. Shackled

by titC



Series: Whumptober 2019 [9]
Category: Daredevil (TV), The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: Gen, Hospital, M/M, he's uh well he's here but um, matt is the whumped decoration here, whumptober2019
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-09
Updated: 2019-10-09
Packaged: 2020-10-17 05:47:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,193
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20615966
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/titC/pseuds/titC
Summary: Foggy gets a phone call.





	9. Shackled

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to [Whumptober](https://whumptober2019.tumblr.com/) for organizing it and [PixelByPixel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PixelByPixel) for the beta!  
For my DaredevilBingo prompt _Man in the chair_.

Foggy Nelson was a normal guy, with normal fears. One of his biggest fears was a phone call, _the _phone call.

The one that starts with, “Mr. Franklin P. Nelson? We’re sorry to call you with bad news.”

It could have been about his parents, about Theo; it could have been about Marci. Of course, it was about Matt. That was the least surprising thing about the whole weekend. He could never remember how he got to the hospital, afterwards.

They said he was the only severely injured person, that everybody else had been mostly okay. A broken arm here, some stitches there, but the few kids in the bus were more or less fine; the truck had hit the empty rows. Even the bus driver had been saved by her seatbelt. But there had been one pedestrian right there, caught between the truck’s trailer swerving towards the sidewalk and the building, and that one pedestrian had been – of course – Matt. A witness saw it all happen and was the first to call 911, but Mr. Blind Ninja wasn’t fast enough to get out of the way this time, and… yeah.

Hence the phone call, hence sitting on a crappy chair in a yellowed waiting room, hence pondering the wisdom of a third terrible coffee from the old coffee machine in the corner.

That’s how he learned he was still Matt’s emergency number and medical proxy, too. He wished he’d learned about it in other circumstances.

Time was slow and the clock’s hands seemed stuck but they weren’t, so he stopped checking the hour on his phone and comparing it to the wall clock. He looked into the bag they’d given him: Matt’s crushed phone (one light still blinking, probably telling him the battery was dying), his wallet (stained with blood), the twisted wire frame of his glasses. He threw it onto the seat next to him.

He called Marci who was spending the weekend with her parents, then Karen who had gone hiking with some Bulletin friends. That went to voicemail; she was somewhere in the wilderness. He left a message on the answering machine at St. Agnes, texted Claire who’d know who else to get in touch with and how, and then he waited some more. He checked and rechecked the news online, all the speculation about who could have rigged a truck to remote control it and why. It couldn’t have been to ram it into a school bus, right? Who would do that? No one had any answer; everyone was relieved the kids were fine.

Oh, and there was that poor blind guy who’d been caught in the middle, who _hadn’t seen it coming_. Hah. Matt would love that line.

Finally, they came for him. The doctor was nice, his voice quiet. He was trying to be reassuring in his manner, at least. Foggy didn’t really follow what he said: he only remembered, “He’s alive.” There was a bit about how they’d know more in the morning, that the next few hours would be crucial. Matt was alive for now, and that was all that mattered. He’d survived so much already; he’d survive this too, right? He had to.

The doctor led him to the ICU, pointed through a glass window at Matt’s bed. There were so many machines and blinking lights and tubes going in and out. He couldn’t even see Matt’s face. “What’s around his wrists?” Foggy asked. There were thick bands there, and also near the foot of the bed. His ankles were tied, too. Like he was a dangerous criminal. Foggy wanted to throw up a little.

“Oh, we’ve had to restrain him. He started to come out from under anaesthesia earlier than we expected, and he was very confused.”

“Isn’t that normal?”

The doctor made a face. “It is, yeah. But his confusion manifested in, uh, unusual ways. Not entirely unheard of, but unusual.”

“Dangerous ways?”

“For himself, yes. We really need him not to move at all for now.”

“Oh, Matty,” Foggy whispered. “What have you done to yourself now?”

“We understand you’re his proxy,” the doctor said very gently, after a while.

“We’re not there yet.” Foggy cut him off; he wasn’t ready for that conversation.

The doctor nodded and left, and Foggy sat on yet another chair and looked at the blinking lights and listened to the beeps and waited.

Nurses came and went, and Foggy tried to think of the silver linings while he watched them work around the beds in the unit. Matt’s other identity was still a secret; he had all his limbs and was able to move them enough that he had to be tied to the bed. That was good, right? It was all good.

He told Marci to stay with her family and vowed to get his hands on better furniture for the waiting room at Nelson and Murdock. He was the only guy to spend the night in those chairs, and he was starting to think that lying down on the floor would be more comfortable. A nurse came to tell him he could see the patient, and so Foggy suited up and walked in and stared at what he could see of Matt’s face. Between the bandages and the oxygen mask, he could see some bruises, but – thankfully – so far no one had mentioned some were older than that very afternoon. No one had said anything about all the injuries, old and less old, that Matt’s body was covered with, and he hoped no one would.

So Foggy held his hand a bit, felt the fingers twitch, watched his head move a little. His other arm jerked and if it hadn’t been restrained, it would have dislodged at least some of the tubes and IV. He had a neck brace, something around one leg, too; he was intubated. Shit, he was a mess. “You’ll be okay, buddy. You’ll be okay.” It was stupid, but what was he supposed to say? “We’ll find whoever did this and we’ll sue them to their last penny,” he added. “You broke your glasses again, right? And your cane. We’ll replace them, buddy.” Foggy’s throat was so tight he had to stop.

When the nurse came to lead him out, he patted Matt’s hand before following.

He was back to glaring at the chairs, and waiting for – he wasn’t sure what, no. The night was turning into morning; it was 4:30 and he wanted the doc to come back and say Matt would be okay, that he was going to make it. Foggy really didn’t want to think of all the time Matt would spend recovering. Weeks, probably months. He was going to be a terrible patient, and Foggy didn’t care as long as Matt was alive. He leaned his head back against the wall and closed his eyes for a bit.

He was jerked awake when they wheeled Matt into another room. The doc smiled and nodded, and Foggy followed the bed. “Not quite out of the woods, but we have better hopes he’ll get there now,” he said. Matt was still hooked up to a lot of machines and restrained, but at least he was out of the ICU now and that had to be a good sign, right? They’d removed his breathing tube too, though he still had an oxygen mask. They pointed him to a chair that looked slightly less back-breaking than the previous ones, and he sank into it. Small mercies.

At 6:45, he got up to stretch his legs and wander down to the cafeteria to get some food and not-waiting-room coffee. He sent a few texts, looked at some tired docs and nurses grabbing a bite after their shifts and others coming in to start theirs. He finished his bagel, got another coffee, and took the stairs back up to Matt’s room to get the blood pumping a little.

But then, when he reached the door, he found himself face to face with one Frank Castle. He held onto his coffee only because he needed all the fortitude he could get.

“The fuck?” Yeah, so blame him. He’d hardly slept for two days, his stomach lining had been nuked by all the caffeine he’d downed, and the fucking Punisher was about to go in and kill Matt. It was A Mood, and not a nice, sweet one.

“Nelson,” he said.

“You’re not going in.”

“Watch me.”

Foggy stepped between Castle and the door, the paper cup his only weapon. Or protection. His only something, anyway. “Over my dead body.”

Castle’s eyes went to the door, then back to Foggy. “I’m not going to kill you. Move.”

“No. Leave him alone.”

“No can do.” Castle frowned. “What do you think I’m doing here?”

“What do I think – remember that time you made headlines after your hospital stunt? Remember what you did?”

Castle shrugged. “I’m not carrying that kind of weapon right now.” He took a step forward, and Foggy put his hand up and tried not to dwell on Frank’s suggestion he had other kinds of weapons on him. Shit, the man was deadly enough all by himself.

“No,” Foggy said. He hoped his voice didn’t waver (too much).

“Fuck’s sake, Nelson. Let me in. I have to go in.”

“Why?” Now that Foggy was looking a bit more closely, he could see Castle looked a bit pinched. “He’s not going to do whatever it is you want him to do.”

“I don’t want him to do anything. I’ve been trying to call him since yesterday and he wasn’t picking up. We were supposed to… then I heard about the truck.” He cleared his throat. “Found out he was here.”

“Wait, you have his number?”

“‘Course I have his number.” Castle stared down his broken nose at Foggy. “So he didn’t tell you, huh.”

“Tell me what?”

“I asked him not to, but I thought he wouldn’t keep it from _you_.”

“Keep what from me?” At that, Castle looked away, then back up to the door. He avoided Foggy’s eyes, which was very much unlike him. “Castle – Frank. Keep what from me?”

“We’re, uh.” He cleared his throat. “You know.”

“I really, really don’t.”

“We. Have a thing? Yeah.”

“A thing. A Punisher thing? Because shooting people isn’t _his _thing, you know.”

“Yeah, I know.” And wow, there was a tiny smile on his face now. Who _was _this guy? “We’re a thing.”

Foggy suddenly realized what Castle was trying to say, and it was the most egregious lie he’d ever heard. “Pull the other one. You’re not going in, and I’m calling security.”

“No – wait.” Foggy lifted his eyebrows, but Castle didn’t do or say anything more. Okay, so then – “Uh, here.” He was holding out his phone.

“What?”

“Look at the fucking phone, Nelson.”

Jesus, fine, he’d look at the phone. “No way,” Foggy whispered. He looked back up at Frank.

“See?” Oh yeah, Foggy had seen. And could not unsee it. “Can I go in, now?”

Foggy stepped away from the door, too shocked to do anything else. Matt and Frank? Really? They’d looked so… _normal_, in that photo.

But he could see how gently Frank’s fingers combed Matt’s hair, how carefully they wrapped around his wrist, right above the restraint. Most of the time, he made it easy to forget he’d been a husband and a father; but that moment wasn’t most of the time. He bent and kissed Matt’s forehead, casual as you please, and looked back at Foggy.

“Go home, Nelson. It’s my turn now. I have your number.” _What? _“I’ll call you when he wakes up.”

“The doc said…”

“He’ll be fine. I bet he’ll be a little bitch during PT, though.”

“But…”

Castle took the slightly less vertebrae-destroying chair and plonked it right by Matt’s bed. “It’s my watch now; I’m not leaving. You might as well get some shut-eye and a shower, yeah?”

Foggy watched him make himself as comfortable as one could in those chairs. He did look ready to wait for as long as it took. Well, he was a soldier. They knew how to wait. And however scary Castle could be, Foggy didn’t really believe he’d ever hurt Matt, even without their… thing. “I’ll let a nurse know you’re here,” he said.

“Name’s Pete.”

“Huh?”

“Pete Castiglione. Not, you know.”

“Oh. Oh, right. Okay.”

“And leave that coffee here, willya?”

Foggy looked down at the not quite hot coffee from the cafeteria that was still in his hand. He was going to talk to a nurse, hop in a cab, and crash in bed. He didn’t need it. “Yeah, sure. Just… okay.”

The morning air was cool enough to keep him mostly awake until he was home, and Foggy had never appreciated his bed like he did right then in the two entire seconds it took him to fall asleep.

When he woke up, an unknown number had sent him a picture of Matt. The oxygen mask was off and he looked like shit, but he was smiling to his mom. And best of all, he was alive.


End file.
